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OPINION: Profiling Natasha As Segilola, Sweetheart Of 1001 Men

Published

7 months ago

April 6, 2025

By Festus Adedayo

Sorry, I digress. Gradually, the Nigerian presidency is putting finishing touches to its own sculpture of a village liar, Ìbídùn, it is busy carving. Or writing itself into the pathetic biblical story of an early Christian community in Jerusalem which witnessed a lying couple by the name, Ananias and Sapphira. Ìbídùn was the proverbial woman who, determined to make deception an art, walked close to a popular masquerader at the marketplace. Amidst the din of wild dances and celebration, Ìbídùn saluted the masquerader thus: “it has been quite a while!” In a masquerade cult shrouded in secrecy, where identity of the masquerader is hidden from everyone, male or female, except initiates, how did Ìbídùn know the personality shrouded under the agò (costume)? To capture Ìbídùn’s costly deception, my people say, “Èké Ìbídùn tií kí eégún kú àtijọ́”.

While the president junkets, off-the-cuff, to Paris like a chronic diabetic flying into the restroom, his Tańtólóhun dogs (Ref my piece, Obasanjo and Tinubu’s Tańtólóhun dogs, November 24, 2024) spin an embarrassingly deceptive refrain that he goes “on a working visit.” As this deception roulette is fast taking the toga of Ìbídùn’s lie, I have a cryptic projection for this uncritical lie: When the going goes, the come will end up coming. It is a literal lift from the Yoruba warning, “bí àlọ bá lọ, àbò nbọ wá bọ”. It warns of impending repercussions for the Ìbídùns. At a time when their home is burning, with more than 52 people reported dead in the recent Plateau State crisis, the president and his vice are trapped in the comfort of foreign lands.

I am back. Whether sponsored, contrived, deliberate or real, the discourses surrounding Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan since that space-induced altercation in the parliament broke out, would make you think you were in pre-colonial Nigeria. And Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, an incarnate of infamous 1930 sexual mascot, Segilola. Saheed Aderinto’s 2015 book, When sex threatened the state: Illicit sexuality, nationalism, and politics in colonial Nigeria (1900-1958) did justice to Segilola. According to him, one of the most detailed sexual narratives of that time could be found in the sexual memoir of Segilola, a Lagos prostitute. Written in Yoruba, its title was, Ìtàn Ìgbésí Aiyé Èmi Segilola El’ẹyinju Ẹgẹ, Elegberun Ọkọ L›aiyé. When translated into English, the book title reads, “The Life History of Me Segilola Endowed With Fascinating Eyes, the Sweetheart of a Thousand And One Men”. Advertised in the July 5, 1930 edition of the bi-lingual newspaper, Akéde Èkó (The Lagos Herald), the book, which British anthropologist, Karin Barber, called the first Yoruba novel, sold out during the period of its 30-chapter serialization in the newspaper. It became such a literary hot cake to gobble that it caused peer jealousy and rivalry between The Lagos Herald and the dominant newspaper of the time, The Nigerian Daily Times.

Born in September 1882, Segilola was a lady of noble parentage, sole survivor of her parents’ six children, who chose to commercialize her body for men’s sensual feast. From the time she lost her virginity to a herbalist whom she ran to for procurement of sex charm, Segilola courted men across generations. One of her lovers promised her pocket money of 10 pounds and another, between 1910s and 1920s, spent 30 pounds on her in three months. Knowingly or unknowingly, the adversaries of Akpoti-Uduaghan have attempted to cast her in the mould of Segilola. Her traducers sexualize her travails, belittle her courage and audacity, as well as her resistance to male chauvinism and the tyranny of her tormentors.

Akpoti-Uduaghan, like Segilola, is however an El’ẹyinju Ẹgẹ, in possession of a ravishing beauty. Her travails began as politics of space allocation on the floor of the Nigerian senate. Gradually, it transformed into sexual politics, reminding one of French historian, Michel Foucault’s discourse on sexuality. Foucault had submitted that there is a link between sex and relations of power. Today, the spat between this senator representing Kogi Central and president of the senate, Godswill Akpabio, has effectively polarized Nigerians along divides: gender, politics, etc.

Akpoti-Uduaghan is a prostitute. She appears on the floor of the Senate in transparent dresses. Senate is not a clubhouse. She has had four husbands and four children, so go the narratives. Even a newspaper, daily used as validation of federal power, did what it called an expose on the senator. With the title, “The Natasha we knew”, it lent assistance to Natasha’s adversaries in ill-sexualizing her, and positioning her as Segilola incarnate. This it did by excavating what it called her sexual past. The aim was to profile Natasha as a woman who has seen more men’s nakedness than an Ijaw fisherman can ever see shrimps. Or, as Cleopatra (70-30BC), Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Cleopatra deployed her charm and bewitching beauty to seduce Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, succeeded in having children for both.

On the social media, Akpoti-Uduaghan has further been profiled as possessing a feral ferociousness. Even Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe attempted to add a salacious dimension to the mix: “But the beauty of Distinguished Senator Natasha is a problem to her… there’s no doubt about that… when she’s passing, there’s no way a man will not look at that woman”, he said on a national television interview.

Contrariwise, Natasha is better suited for casting in the mould of Mekatilili wa Menza. Mekatilili was Kenya’s 19th century amazon, a precursor of Dedan Kimathi’s Mau Mau uprising heroism against British colonial imperialism. Mekatilili, like Natasha, suffered tar-brushes and profiling of the male gender and from even women of similar biology. As her Giriama people resisted British tyranny, Mekatilili was profiled as one of those who forced her people into blood oath administration, especially at the rituals held in July and August, 1913 at Kaya Fungo. History however today recorded Mekatilili as a feminist symbol of resistance, a strong woman from a marginalized ethnicity who challenged oppressive norms of a male-dominated society. In the Giriama resistance to colonial policies which led to the uprising of 1913, Mekatilili played a significant role.

The crossroads where Mekatilili and Akpoti-Uduaghan’s path would seem to have met actually happened at a public baraza (meeting) in Kenya. Mekatilili confronted Arthur Champion, British colonial administrator, swearing never to allow him enlist Giriama youth to work in plantations. Deploying an anecdote to depict the battle ahead, Mekatilili dared Champion to take away the chick from Mother Hen and see Mother Hen’s ferocious resistance.

Since the last one month or so when the initial spatial politics on the floor of the Nigerian senate began, Akpoti-Uduaghan has shown her traducers that they had taken away the chick from Mother Hen. You may not know the orthodoxies which she has thus far challenged, the battles she has resisted and the graphs she has redrawn in the socio-politics of Nigeria. The first graph she re-plotted is one which hitherto assumed that, every beautiful woman is a Segilola prostitute, a chattel and sex symbol. With the multiple battles Natasha has fought in the last one month; the strings – national and international – she has pulled and the upturn of the narratives she has made by internationalizing her battles, Natasha has shown that she possesses more brain than scores of her male colleagues who mark time in the Nigerian parliament. More instructively, she must have shown her constituents who thought her femininity was a drawback that she is a battleaxe stronger than many men.

If you can pull Akpabio to an inner sacristy and ask him what legislative hill he has thus far found most exerting to surmount, he would reveal it is the Natasha turmoil. Before now, if Akpabio was one who mistook the Ibadan Kudeti River for a mere erosion, now, he must have learnt that Kudeti is a raging river which sweeps off its captives in moments of rage. The major orthodoxy that Natasha has thus far succeeded in upturning is that, Akpabio is likely never going to take any person for granted again, regardless of their gender.

When Funmilayo Ransom-Kuti, a head teacher of a local school in Abeokuta, confronted the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Samuel Ladapo Ademola, while fighting the oppressive colonial tax regime, she saw the battle, like Mekatilili, as a feminist symbol of resistance. She thus rose above her marginalized gender to challenge oppressive norms of a male-dominated society. More tellingly, Ransom-Kuti saw the fight against the colonial rule structure as a fight between two gender weapons – the penis and the vagina. Said she: “Idowu, (Aláké) you have used your penis as a mark of authority against us for far too long a time; posturing that you were our husband. Today, however, the table has turned and we are poised to reverse the equation by deploying our vagina as a weapon of conquest to play the role of husband on you… O you former men conquerors, the head of the vagina has sought vengeance.” On January 3, 1949, the Aláké was forced to abdicate the throne. That speech was in part a feminist resistance epistemology. In Ransom-Kuti’s confrontation of an existing status-quo, howbeit unknowingly initially, you can see same picture, though minute, in the battle Natasha waged against Akpabio. She waged same war against the cabal in the senate and the clowns of Kogi State who blithely and brainlessly bungled the process of her recall. The battles are united by a fight for the supremacy of the genitalia, the penises and an apparently irrepressible female organ.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Now That Natasha Has Made Akpabio Happy

Very seldom is heroism an intended act. Indeed, most heroes transmute from disdain to the dais. Madam Efunroye Tinubu is as an example. In the beginning, she was just an economically influential woman in Lagos during the reigns of three kings, Adele, Dosunmu and Akitoye. However, by virtue of her grips on Lagos economy, Tinubu veered into the stronghold of political power, even assisting kings to gain power. She had a vast trade network of slaves, palm oil, firearms, cotton, tobacco, salt and coconut oil which extended to European merchants. After her exile to Abeokuta, she still helped Egba in the war against Dahomey, supplying them munitions. Even when the British signed the 1852 treaty with Oba Akioye for the abolishment of Atlantic Slave Trade, Tinubu was still covertly trading in her over 360 slaves, which today casts a pall on her heroism. She even attempted to assassinate the British Consul, Benjamin Campbell.

Today, as Mekatilili dared Arthur Champion to take away the chick from Mother Hen and see her ferocious resistance, Natasha is reproducing that trope. Apart from Akpabio, other accomplices of the fight to rout Natasha are feeling the wild push-back of Mother Hen. A petition against Akpabio and Senator Neda Imasuen is pending at the Legal Practitioners’ Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) to have both disbarred. Yahaya Bello and his sidekick, Ahmed Ododo have met their waterloo in the ferociousness of Mother Hen as she flew into Kogi in a helicopter. There is the tendency for you not to like Natasha’s ultra-boldness and self-assuredness in a patriarchal society like ours where women are expected to be reticent and timid as a cat; her beauty may even bring up to you the shadow of Segilola, but you cannot dismiss her unexampled heroine courage and against-method daring of evil men.

I have come to submit myself to the wisdom in one of legendary Yoruba musician, Ayinla Omowura’s songs, which says, it is not every leaf which the herbalist must pluck, neither should a wine-tapper climb every palm tree. Some leaves are poisonous while on top of some palm trees reside venomous vipers. Does Akpabio now know this?

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Why We Expanded Presidential Amnesty Scholarship Scheme — Otuaro

Published

15 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

Otuaro (middle) in a group photograph with the PAP foreign scholarship students in the United Kingdom after an interactive session in London on Saturday, 25 October, 2025.

The Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Dr Dennis Otuaro, has expressed his unwavering commitment to ensuring that more indigent students and communities of the Niger Delta benefit from the PAP scholarship scheme.

He stated this while explaining what informed his decision to expand the scheme and increase formal education opportunities for poor students, and to build a huge manpower base in the region.

A statement issued by Mr Igoniko Oduma, Special Assistant on Media to the PAP boss said Otuaro spoke during an interactive session in London on Saturday with the beneficiaries of the scholarship initiative deployed for undergraduate and post-graduate programmes in universities across the United Kingdom.

The engagement, which was at the instance of the PAP boss, provided an opportunity for the Office and the scholarship students to discuss issues pertaining to their welfare and challenges with a view to addressing them.

Otuaro said that while in-country scholarship deployment was 3800 in the 2024/2025 academic year, the figure increased to 3900 in the 2025/2026 and foreign scholarships were about 200.

He attributed the increase in deployment to the massive support of President Bola Tinubu and the Office of the National Security Adviser.

Otuaro stressed that he was greatly encouraged by the President and the NSA, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and that he knows how impressed both of them are concerning the PAP initiatives, which align with the Renewed Hope Agenda.

He reiterated his call on the students to justify the huge investment in their education by the Federal Government by studying hard to make good grades.

He also urged them to conduct themselves and be responsible ambassadors of Nigeria while in the U.K, stressing that “you will be adding value to your families and communities when you complete your programmes successfully.”

The PAP helmsman said, “We want the scholarship programme to impact more students and communities in the Niger Delta. That’s why we have expanded it and increased formal education opportunities.

“We want you to take this opportunity very seriously so that the government, too, will be encouraged. I know how much support His Excellency, President Bola Tinubu GCFR, gives to the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

“Mr President and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, are very impressed with what we are doing. On your behalf I would like to, once again , thank His Excellency and the NSA for giving you this life-changing opportunity. We are confident that Mr President and the NSA will continue to support us.

“The knowledge you are receiving in your institutions today is to enable you plan yourself and prepare for the future. Whatever knowledge you gain cannot be taken from you.

“So as PAP scholarship students, we expect responsible and good behaviour from you. Government is investing heavily in you and you have the obligation to justify the investment. Be agents of change and avoid acts of mischief while in the U.K.”

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OPINION: A ‘Crazy’ African Nation, Where Citizens Eat And Drink Football

Published

17 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

By Tony Erha

It was in October, a semi-summer-month and twilight of the year that ushers in the chilling and extreme winter. A nonagenarian woman gave me a friendly smile that revealed cheeky dimples. As I bowed respectfully to her ripened age, she offered a leathery hand for a handshake, which I received warmly, returning her infectious smile. For a youth who prays for longevity shouldn’t deprive the elderly of the walking stick. I had helped her, carrying a furred handbag to our seats on a night-long intercity bus, from Istanbul to Ankara, in Turkey, the Balkan nation, where we stopped over, in year 2004.

She spoke Turkish rapidly, whilst I retorted in a passable and incoherent Turkish language that ‘I don’t speak the official language of the only country of the world that is located on two continents; Europe and Asia. “You American?” She asked in English. It was obvious that my jeans, necklace and a fez cap that I upturned, in the manner of the Yankees, might have portrayed me as one. “No. I am a Nigerian”, I said, dragging the words. “You Nee-jay-rian!” she exclaimed, whilst I nodded confidently. Then she was elated; “Okocha Jay-Jay!” She spoke to others in the bus that clapped and hailed. I wondered why a 91 years-old-woman, was so passionate about football and one of its heroes, as if she was a youth.

At her request, an old video of a football match showed the mesmerising display of Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, viewed on a television set affixed to the bus. There were instantaneous excitement and catcalls each time Okocha, the great football ‘talisman’ from Nigeria, did his ball flips and dribble-runs that displaced his opponents, earning him one of the few (if not the greatest) football entertainers in football’s history. It was as if the video tape, recorded in his notable plays in Besiktas, a Turkish club side, was a live match. So great was Okocha’s global fame that the old woman relived again; “Jay Jay Okocha is a dangerous footballer, who’s full of tricks on the field of play. The only trick he didn’t do with the ball from his bag of football artistry was to play on top the swimming pool”. In Mustafa Ataturk’s nation, footballers of Nigeria’s decent had and still make their soccer very eventful.

Victor Osimhen, the leggy playmaker and striker with a dye-hair like the white mushroom head, who recently renewed his contract with Galatasaray, a Turkish top team, is also a Nigerian, who has received the applause in the peninsula country and across the globe like Jay Jay Okocha. Candidly, Oshimen, the goal mechine, who is a tonic to the Turks and football fans across the world, also does the unimaginative with the round leather, but certainly not with the same fascinating skills of Jay Jay! But the Turkish fans are readily tilted to football fanaticism.

Victor Osimhen

If it’s ‘fanatic-fans’ in Turkish football, it’s certainly ‘supporters hooliganism’ in the United Kingdom (UK), where association soccer (football) was founded in 1863, with similar kicking games played in Greece, China and Rome since 2,000 years. In UK, football is played with fanfares, pool betting and media vuvuzela. English soccer is a gainful entertainment industry raking in huge gate fees from plays, promotions, television and media razzmatazz, which is often imitated in Nigeria, with passions and ‘occult’ following. So worrisome was the ‘social hype and lawlessness’ youths and others attach to English soccer that security operatives have constant migraine fighting soccer addiction and frequent street brawls.

Jay Jay Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu, Dan Amokachi, Taribo West and other Nigerian stars, that once dominated and currently rule other foreign clubs, opened the floodlight of extremist football following into the country. Once upon a time, the then Prince Charles (now the king of England), was spotted (with young boys) playing the game, inside the Buckingham Palace, all wearing jersey number ’10’ with Jay Jay Okocha’s name inscribed). That the number-one-global-royalty adored soccer by wearing the jersey of a footballer from a third-world African nation, somewhat illustrates that which is often said about soccer being more than a mere sport. ‘Football Tripper’, a British online news porter, describes soccer as “oxygen” to numerous men and women. In Brazil, the South American nation, there is a deity called “Soccer”, as well as it’s a vivacious Reggae, a unique music genre in Jamaica.

Still, it is food and sups in Nigeria. In this Africa’s most populous nation, with plentiful viewing centres and liquor spots, there are live television football tournaments and soccer video games, with consumable food, alcoholics, carbonated drinks and some ‘unlawful substances’ that are at the behest of business owners and ‘intoxicated’ fans.

In what soccer dramatics came to know as ‘the Dammam Miracle’, viewing centres, beer parlours and restaurants were instantly sold out in the country, in 1989, after ‘footbocrazy’ Nigerians, stormed the streets in prolonged wild celebrations. For the Nigerian U-20 football team, at the FIFA World Youth Championship, held in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, came back from a four-goal deficit to level up and defeat the Russian counterpart, making the Nigerian team the first to come back from a semi-final to win a FIFA tournament. Soccer, indeed, is a crazy sport in Nigeria. Once upon a time, a man had shattered the screen of his expensive television, because Austin Jay Jay Okocha, his favourite star, had lost a penalty in a continental match!

It’s said that football, especially when the Nigerian national teams of men and woman play, tends to unite Nigerians than other national blights that turn them apart. Now, the current national fanaticism is for the Victor Osimhen-inspired Super Eagles, to qualify for the 2026 World Cup gala, even though it has to go the extra obstacles of playing more legs, whereas the team had frittered the early opportunities to qualify.

And sensing that most Nigerians care less of the economic woes that plagued them, but for the football fad, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the nation’s President, would cash-in to feed their ago awarding huge cash to high profile football tournaments and wins, like he recently accorded the Super Falcons, the female national team, for achieving a similitude of the Dammam miracle, to bring home a coveted African Cup of Nations (AFCON) trophy!

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Ex-soldiers Fume Over Lifetime Benefits For Sacked Service Chiefs

Published

22 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

The sacked Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, and two other service chiefs, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, and Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, are set to receive generous retirement benefits.

The benefits include bulletproof vehicles, domestic aides, and lifetime medical care.

Their exit follows President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of new service chiefs on Friday.

General Olufemi Oluyede has been named the new Chief of Defence Staff, while Major-General W. Shaibu takes over as Chief of Army Staff.

Air Vice Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke becomes the new Chief of Air Staff, and Rear Admiral I. Abbas the Chief of Naval Staff. The Chief of Defence Intelligence, Major-General E.A.P. Undiendeye, retains his position.

The President’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, said in a statement on Friday that the removal of the service chiefs was in furtherance of the Federal Government’s ongoing efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s national security architecture.

According to the Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service for Officers and Enlisted Personnel in the Nigerian Armed Forces, signed by President Tinubu on December 14, 2024, the service chiefs are entitled to substantial retirement packages upon disengagement.

The document stipulates that each retiring service chief will receive a bulletproof SUV or an equivalent vehicle, to be maintained and replaced every four years by the military.

They are also entitled to a Peugeot 508 or an equivalent backup vehicle.

Beyond the vehicles, the package includes five domestic aides — two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener — along with an aide-de-camp or security officer, and a personal assistant or special assistant.

They will also retain three service drivers, a service orderly, and a standard guard unit comprising nine soldiers.

The benefits extend to free medical treatment both in Nigeria and abroad, as well as the retention of personal firearms to be retrieved upon their demise.

However, while officers of lieutenant-general rank and equivalents are entitled to international and local medical care worth up to $20,000 annually, the benefits for the service chiefs, though not stated in the document, are believed to be considerably higher.

The HTCOS reads, “Retirement benefits for CDS and Service Chiefs: The following benefits shall be applicable: one bulletproof SUV or equivalent vehicle to be maintained by the Service and to be replaced every four years. One Peugeot 508 or equivalent backup vehicle.

‘’Retention of all military uniforms and accoutrement to be worn for appropriate ceremonies; five domestic aides (two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener); one Aide-de-Camp/security officer; one Special Assistant (Lt/Capt or equivalents) or one Personal Assistant (Warrant Officer or equivalents); standard guard (nine soldiers).

“Three service drivers; one service orderly; escorts (to be provided by appropriate military units/formation as the need arises); retention of personal firearms (on his demise, the personal firearm(s) shall be retrieved by the relevant service); and free medical cover in Nigeria and abroad.”

However, the policy specifies that such entitlements apply only if the retired officers have not accepted any other appointment funded from public resources — except when such an appointment is made by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In such cases, the officers, according to the document, will only receive allowances commensurate with the new role rather than a full salary.

Retired soldiers protest lavish perks

Reacting, some retired soldiers decried what they described as the luxurious benefits and entitlements reserved for service chiefs and senior military officers.

They lamented that junior personnel continued to suffer neglect and unpaid entitlements despite years of service to the nation.

The retired officers expressed frustration over the disparity in welfare and treatment between senior and junior ranks within the military.

One of the leaders of the discharged soldiers demanding their owed entitlements, Sgt. Zaki Williams, expressed frustration over the entitlements reserved for the service chiefs.

Speaking in an emotional tone, Williams, who claimed to be speaking for more than 700 soldiers in his group, said many retired non-commissioned officers had been abandoned despite dedicating their lives to defending the country.

He said, “I don’t really understand how our people in Nigeria do things. The people at the top always do things to favour only themselves. They don’t care about the poor or the junior ones who sacrificed everything.”

The retired sergeant recalled that government officials had made several promises to improve their welfare, but none had been fulfilled.

“Since the day they made those promises to us, we went back home and didn’t hear anything again. Everything just ended there. We’ve been waiting till now, but nothing has happened,” he added.

Williams said the situation had left many of his colleagues demoralised and divided over whether to continue pressing for their entitlements.

“Some of us said we should protest again, but others refused. We told them that day that we were not going for another protest. If the government wants to help us, they should help us. If not, we’re done,” he said.

He also accused senior military officers of frustrating efforts by the defence ministry to address the concerns of retired personnel.

According to Williams, life after service has been extremely difficult for most of them who retired voluntarily or were discharged without compensation.

“How can someone retire after years of service and still not get their entitlement? Many of us can’t even build a house. The senior officers have houses, cars, and everything good, but the rest of us have nothing,” he said.

He added that the little compensation given to some was not enough to rebuild their lives.

“If they give you N2m today, what can you really start with it in this country? You have children, family, and responsibilities, yet you can’t even afford a plot of land,” he said.

Expressing disappointment, he said most junior officers had lost faith in the system.

“We’ve handed everything over to God,” he said quietly. “We’ve cried and done our best. They promised us, but in the end, it’s still zero. We haven’t seen anything. That’s why many of us are now silent.”

Another retired soldier, Abdul Isiak, lamented that promises made to retired personnel had remained unfulfilled, leaving many struggling to survive.

He said, “All you said they would give to them would be done promptly, and they are more than what we need to sustain our lives. This is very unfair. We have suffered a lot, and they’re yet to give us our entitlements after leaving the service. What is our offence? Is it because we are junior officers?”

The former sergeant said the senior officers continued to enjoy generous retirement packages while lower ranks were denied their due benefits.

“We are preparing for another protest for them to pay us. This is very bad,” he said.

(PUNCH)